Brothers and Sisters:
Our bargaining team (Harlan Baker, USM; Michele Cheung, USM; Ed Nadeau, UM; and Jim Seymour, UMA) has now engaged in multiple sessions with the University of Maine System (UMS) over our contract for August 2015-August 2017. That makes us the holdouts – PATFA is the last bargaining unit that has not settled with UMS yet. (If you’re wondering, when negotiations outlast the time period covered by the previous contract, that contract prevails until the new one is agreed to. You do have a contract in force now. The new agreement comes with retroactive steps to adjust pay raises, for example.)
The hang-up issue, as could be expected, is over a raise in pay. In this game of offer and counteroffer, what UMS keeps coming back with is offers that would give a low percentage raise for all adjuncts, not even matching cost-of-living increases, and a one-time lump sum that only some adjuncts would qualify for. Our answer is now and always should be that we will not be divided. A two-tiered payment arrangement is the thin end of the wedge that, as people retire, would tip the system to an adjunct staff even more underpaid than we are now. (Longevity of service is already equitably recognized in the three-tier pay scale in our existing contract.)
Beyond that, one-time lump sums look like money now, but don’t appear in the contract base-pay rate from which we would start bargaining next time. It’s not a raise – it just disappears and at the next round of agreements, you’re back at Go. Further, just like the food that’s no good and there’s not enough of it, these lump sums are laughably small.
Our answer has been for UMS to keep the lump sums and come back with a raise based on the contract rate for every adjunct. No answer we have yet received from them meets these criteria.
For this reason, the team has decided to ask for mediation from the Maine Labor Relations Board. Another long wait, but we are confident it will be worth it. I’ll keep you apprised as new developments arise and maybe we’ll see a new and better agreement soon.
In solidarity,
Michele Cheung
President, Part-time Faculty Association of Maine, Local 4593, American Federation of Teachers